The environment organizations are operating in has changed faster than the way most of them are governed. Boards are being asked to weigh in on more issues, with less time, under more scrutiny, and with consequences that are harder to walk back. In that context, the quality of governance is no longer a background condition. It is one of the things that determines whether an organization holds up under pressure.
Lynn Beauregard, President of the Governance Professionals of Canada (GPC), has been making this case for years. Governance professionals, in her words, sit at the critical intersection of the board, management, and stakeholders, designing how information flows, how risk is surfaced, and what a board sees and when. That is not an administrative description; it is a description of the people who shape the conditions for decision-making and what leaders are able to do with the information in front of them.
And yet, the role has historically been under-recognized, often folded into someone else’s job. Beauregard argues this needs to change
and that’s the mindset behind GPC’s push to define governance as a profession in its own right, and behind initiatives like the Next Gen Governance Professionals Initiative, which Beauregard describes as a deliberate investment in building a strong, diverse, and future-ready pipeline for the governance profession.
“Strong governance is not incidental,” she says. “It is intentionally built and stewarded by skilled individuals, and organizations that recognize this will be better positioned to navigate uncertainty and sustain trust.”
The argument is easier to make in the abstract than to see in practice, which is why this piece pairs her perspective with two people doing the work from very different starting points.
A lawyer who chose governance
Tolulope Oghenevwapo came to governance through law, and she chose it on purpose. She moved from the Nigerian bar through governance training and corporate practice into her current role as Corporate Secretary at Ontario Pension Board, and she completed the GPC.D Designation program before sitting her Canadian bar exam. “That was how important it was to me,” She explains.
What pushed her in that direction was not theory but the work itself. As she advised corporate clients, she noticed something that pure legal training did not prepare her for. Legal advice was only part of what the boards actually needed.
“You’re in the boardroom and things come up, and most of it is them just performing their fiduciary duties. There are a lot of gray areas in between.”
One of those gray areas is reputation. A purely legal answer can be technically correct and still leave an organization exposed. “You’re fine, you’re not liable or you get off on a technicality, but it’s all over the news. Your reputation is damaged,” Oghenevwapo says. That gap, in her view, is where governance lives, and where lawyers without governance training tend to fall short. “As lawyers, just by our training, we undervalue governance and its relevance.”
In private practice, governance literacy makes you “a better advisor to corporate clients,” because “you understand what the board is actually trying to achieve, not just what the instructions in your briefing from your client says.” In-house, she says, governance literacy “takes you from being just a legal technician to being a trusted member of the leadership team.” And in public service, where she now works, the line is even harder to draw.
“Many of the things that government bodies and agencies do have fundamentally governance questions,” she says, because the work is ultimately about accountability, transparency, and how decisions get made. One doesn’t matter more than the other; they answer different questions, and a lawyer who only answers the first is doing half the job.
“The law will tell you why you have to do this. Governance will tell you how you have to do it,” Oghenevwapo says.
A right decision arrived at through a flawed process, in her view, is still a problem. “You would undermine trust. It would expose you to challenge, to risk, to reputational damage, and it would impact the board’s effectiveness.”
There is also a human dimension to the work that she thinks legal training tends to underplay. “Lawyers also really underestimate the relationships, the culture, the unspoken dynamics in the boardroom,” she says. “The law is clear. You do this, you get this. But what is not clear is the people, and which is where governance comes in.”
For law students and younger lawyers wondering whether the additional training is worth it, her answer is direct: it gives you an edge. “As a lawyer, if you understand governance, you’re bringing a lot to the table,” she says. “You’re not only protecting the organization from legal risk, which is what the law teaches you to do. You’re also helping the organization build that reputation.”
A governance career without a law degree
Emma de Waal got to the same place in a different way. She started in general administration in the construction sector, moved into a corporate role at Concentra Bank, and ended up, as she puts it, “also plunked in the governance department.” Two senior lawyers took the time to mentor her and she learned governance by being inside it rather than by studying it first.
Today GPC’s Next Gen Champion is Manager, Governance and Corporate Secretary at Innovation Federal Credit Union, in a role her organization deliberately built around governance rather than law. When she applied, they were direct with her. “They told me, we don’t want a lawyer in governance,” she recalls. “We want the focus to be governance.” That clarity matters, because it changes how the work gets done. Too often, she points out, governance ends up “on the side of people’s desks.” Designing the role differently is what makes the difference. “Having someone who’s solely focused on that has allowed an opportunity to really create a good governance, or a well-governed structure and support for the board,” she says.
Her approach to problems reflects that orientation. When she is working through an issue, she does not start with the law. “My first mindset is to create actually the best policy, process or solution that’s effective,” and then cross-reference it back to the law to make sure everything is aligned, de Waal explains. It is a sequence that only makes sense if you accept that governance design is its own discipline. She also pushes back on the idea that governance is narrow work. “It’s so much more than just regulatory and legal compliance,” she says, describing a role that lets her “hear and see the undercurrents of what’s going on” across the organization.
What this means for the profession
Beauregard’s broader point is that this is a moment for people to enter the field on purpose, not by accident. She frames governance as a career path for people who are “curious, analytical, and grounded in integrity,” one that goes “well beyond compliance into judgment, strategy, and leadership enablement.” She is also clear about where the demand is heading.
“There is growing demand for new perspectives, particularly in areas like technology, risk, and stakeholder engagement,” Beauregard says, which is why she encourages people to enter the profession early and build a strong foundation. As she puts it, “impact often comes from shaping the conversations behind the scenes.”
Looking five years ahead, Beauregard expects the current Next Gen cohort to be “quietly but meaningfully elevating the quality of governance across Canada.” The work is specific and the profession is worth taking seriously on its own terms. Whether you arrive through law or through something else entirely matters less than whether the role you step into is designed to let you do the work properly. It is also important that the people doing it are recognized for what the work actually is: shaping the conversations behind the scenes that determine how well an organization is run.
You can find out more here, about the Next Gen Initiative!